It is more or less an article of faith among many home educators that the teaching of reading is unnecessary; children can be expected to pick this skill up for themselves in the right circumstances. In support of this contention, some quote Alan Thomas who carried out research on what he described as the 'informal curriculum'. He said:
'Modern life takes place within a vast sea of written material which surrounds us.... Words are literally everywhere: children are surrounded by advertisements, streets signs...shopping lists, instructions, magazines, bus destinations'
The implication is that reading can be learned with little or no formal instruction; a view which some home educators enthusiastically embrace. Nor is Alan Thomas alone in this belief. As long ago as 1962, Paul Goodman was writing in Compulsory Miseducation that:
' the puzzle is not how to teach reading, but why some children fail to learn to read. given the amount of exposure any urban child gets, any normal animal should catch on to the code'
He goes on to blame schools for reading difficulties and suggests that:
'Many of the backward readers might have had a better chance on the streets'
All of which will be music to the ears of autonomous home educators. There are two points to consider. Firstly, most educationalists believe this to be nonsense. With the exception of the odd piece of research such as Thomas' and the occasional study from an advocate of Steiner in New Zealand, almost everyone thinks that it is necessary and desirable to teach children to read and the earlier the better. Still, what about Alan Thomas' and Paul Goodman's ideas? Could there really be something in this? This brings us neatly to my second point. If it is true that just the experience of living among advertisements, street signs and so on can be enough to get a child going on the road to literacy, then we should see this in other parts of the world. Thomas looked at a handful of kids in England, Ireland and Australia, while Goodman was talking exclusively about America. Surely this informal acquisition of literacy should be widespread wherever children are not in school from the age of five until sixteen?
The literacy rate in London is about 99%. I am not talking here of Ofsted measures at the age of eleven or those getting a C in GCSE English. Instead, I am using the old way of defining literacy; the ability to read or write a simple note. Much was made in the press recently about the number of children leaving primary school with a reading age of seven, but this is perfectly adequate for day to day needs. Our most popular newspaper is specifically designed to be accessible to those with a reading age of seven. It is extraordinarily rare to encounter anybody without moderate to severe learning difficulties in this country who cannot write a simple note or read a passage from the Sun. The official rate is in any case 99%. According to some though, many of these people became literate in spite of rather than because of their schooling. How can we check this?. Easily enough as it happens.
The literacy rate in Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh is just under 50%, which is far higher than rural parts of the country. Here are people who live and work surrounded by all the print that Thomas talks of; the advertisements, street signs, destinations on the front of buses and so on and yet half of them seem stubbornly resistant to acquiring literacy! This is odd. Surely, if Western children can 'catch the code' just by living in a city, then Bengali kids should be able to do the same? Let's see what might account for any difference. Both Bangladesh and England use alphabetic systems, so that is the same. London and Dhaka both have masses of print of all sorts on display in the form of advertisements, bus destinations, street signs and so on; the 'vast sea of written material' which Thomas talks of. That can't be the difference. Oh wait a minute, I think I might have it! In England all but a tiny handful of children attend school between the ages of five and sixteen. Compulsory education, which for almost everybody means compulsory schooling has been a feature of life her for well over a century. In Bangladesh on the other hand, the situation is very different. The overall literacy rate is about 35%. Roughly 40% of children never go to school, only 7% complete secondary school. Here perhaps is a clue.
In one country with near universal compulsory school attendance for eleven years of their lives, there is almost universal literacy. In a country where almost half the children never attend school and only 7% complete secondary school, 65% of the population are illiterate. Puzzling, no? I am surprised that instead of investigating a small group of children in England or America, nobody had thought to look closely at how the 'informal curriculum' works in places like Bangladesh. I think that we could learn something very interesting about the connection between compulsory schooling and literacy rates. Looking at other countries makes the situation very clear. The more children attending school; the higher the literacy rate. Near universal schooling means near universal literacy.
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Alan Thomas has never suggested that children can learn to read just from street signs. Alan Thomas describes very rich and varied environments with responsive carers, access to lots of books, resources and materials, and probably most important, carers that can read themselves. Learning to read is likely to involve such things as reading to the child, answering questions about what words say, playing eye-spy, singing along with alphabet songs in the car, watching Sesame Street (and similar programs) together and much more, little of which will be available to a street child or a child without access to someone who already has literacy. You cannot compare apples to oranges and expect a sensible result.
ReplyDeleteA distinction needs to be made between mode of acquisition - exposure to printed material vs explicit teaching to read - and the degree of exposure to printed material. Another distinction needs to be made between the ability to decode text and reading fluency.
ReplyDeleteIt is perfectly possible for people to learn to decode text by being exposed to it in the environment but obviously they will need someone to tell them what it says until they have worked out the rules for themselves. Their reading fluency would depend on their natural ability to decode the text and on the frequency with which they are exposed to it.
Reading is a complex skill, in cognitive terms, so reading ability, not surprisingly, shows a normal distribution in large populations. Thus, statistically, one would expect around 15% of the population to find it difficult regardless of how they learned or were taught. Why these children don't learn to read, and whether schools make it more difficult for them are valid questions.
A child in Dhaka who isn't at school is likely to be exposed to text, certainly, but the amount of text, and the role it plays in everyday life is going to be very different to that experienced by an autonomously home educated child in the UK surrounded by written material who needs to use it for everyday purposes.
"Alan Thomas has never suggested that children can learn to read just from street signs."
ReplyDeleteOn page 100 of How Children Learn at Home, Thomas discusses the idea which took hold in the seventies that children 'would pick up reading for themselves and would start reading when they were ready'. He endorse this idea and goes on to talk about the print to which children are exposed in everyday life. This proved pretty much of a flop when used in schools, even though the parents of the children were themselves literate. That is why it was dropped and children are now taught to read in a structured way.
"This proved pretty much of a flop when used in schools, even though the parents of the children were themselves literate."
ReplyDeleteCould you provide some figures on the 'flop'?
"This proved pretty much of a flop when used in schools, even though the parents of the children were themselves literate. That is why it was dropped and children are now taught to read in a structured way. "
ReplyDeleteMaybe the results weren't quick enough? I think in AE, some children "pick up" reading, and some ask to be taught. Not really making a point there just my thoughts on what you said.
I taught my daughter to read - before the AE days!- she wasn't keen but was at school and really bothered that she didn't know what the words said so I persevered. I taught the basics + have taught no spelling, but she is aquiring those skills definately. Without any "teaching" but picking them up, by asking for spellings when she needs them, and by copying spellings from where she can find them writen down.
So yes, it must be quite difficult to pick up reading in an environment where most people don't know what the words mean + therefore can't be asked, I'm sure at least 50% of people would need to be able to ask questions to understand words fully, or at least alot of time to think about the words, which I expect AE children do have the time, and street children are busy trying to find food and survive etc.
I recall an experiment with street children + the internet, in which computers with internet access were put into walls where street children would be, and they managed to find their way around the net pretty quickly! Can anyone remember that in any more detail?
http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=44601
ReplyDeleteHere is random example of the sort of study which led to the adoption of phonics in our schools.
As a home educating parent of autonomous learners, most of whom were taught to read by phonetics as an ongoing process since they were toddlers, I would like to register my objection to your curiously belligerently persistent conflation of these various theories and ideas.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to know - to what end? You keep banging the drum for regulation and monitoring, but not even hitting the beat half the time. It doesn't exactly inspire a person to have confidence in your views.
I wouldn't be at all surprised to find informal methods would be 'a flop' in schools. The adult to child ratio is too low - there's not necessarily a person available to answer a reading related question in the moment where the child needs an answer. There is no way to replicate the warmth of one-to-one reading as part of a loving relationship. Also, you can't litter the schools with adults sitting round reading for pleasure. All these things are easy in a home environment - as long as the adults in the home are literate and comfortable with the skills needed to read and write.
ReplyDeleteI know that informal methods can work but I suspect they need pretty specific environments in which to flourish. The first word our daughter read was 'bus', which she read off a bus stop. That doesn't mean that I attribute some mystical power to street signs. I am sure that the hours of enjoying picture books together, the alphabet jigsaws, the tv programmes and a house full of books helped. And, of course, being surrounded by literate adults.
Of course, as I've commented here before (ad nauseum) it really isn't necessary (as an home educating parent) to base your methods on statistical evidence. You have the luxury of being able to work out what works best for each individual child.
In my experience, what people often mean by the informal acquisition of literacy is simply that the child learns to read without reading lessons. It doesn't necessarily mean that the child is expected to learn to read by some kind of vague osmosis.
ReplyDeleteMy daughter was a fluent reader at three and that came essentially from the two of us reading stories for pleasure every day from when she was a baby as part of our lifestyle.
My son became a fluent reader mainly through playing videogames. After he'd quit school at seven. I was a volunteer helper in his school's reading programme both years he was there. It was so tedious I'm amazed the children were expected to acquire a love of reading from the experience. I had trouble staying awake myself. My son's reading development actually went backwards. He won't go near a book almost eight years on. I still feel angry about that when I think of it.
Anonymous wrote: "I recall an experiment with street children + the internet, in which computers with internet access were put into walls where street children would be, and they managed to find their way around the net pretty quickly! Can anyone remember that in any more detail?"
http://blogs.worldbank.org/edutech/searching-for-indias-hole-in-the-wall
The article you cited is about *teaching* children to read using the whole language method. Not quite the same as 'would pick up reading for themselves and would start reading when they were ready'. I can't ever remember the latter being in vogue in schools, although some schools might have used it as a learning strategy.
ReplyDeleteThere is a significant difference between children being actively taught to read using whole language in school, where it's a thing you 'have' to do at a certain age whether you are ready or not, or interested or not, and learning it at home in your own time and for your own purposes.
The first word I ever read was 'Cadbury' on a biscuit tin. Reading with biscuits. Now that could catch on.
ReplyDelete"most of whom were taught to read by phonetics as an ongoing process since they were toddlers,"
ReplyDeleteWaht an extraordinary example of autonomy! Your children actually asked as toddlers to be instructed in phonics?
ice cold wine 2nite webb!
ReplyDelete"Waht an extraordinary example of autonomy! Your children actually asked as toddlers to be instructed in phonics?"
ReplyDeleteSome of showed an interest in letter shapes at that age, yes. Which I then - following my duty (and joy) as a parent - facilitated.
This didn't happen for them all. As others have said: children are all different, with unique natural learning styles. All are proficient readers now, and were before the age of eight.
Typo:
ReplyDelete"Some of showed an interest in letter shapes at that age, yes."
I meant some of them, of course.
re
ReplyDeletehttp://blogs.worldbank.org/edutech/searching-for-indias-hole-in-the-wall
Interesting photo.
All males.
Without making me trawl through all the info from the study myself (have pity, I'm waiting to recover from the stress the annual exams which is still buggering up my ability to sleep) did they find out if there was a gender divide among the kids who took part and acquired skills independently ?
Interesting experiment. One thing to bear in mind is that learning isn't linear. One might need to learn in one way at one point in one's acquisition of a skill or body of knowledge, and another way at another point.
ReplyDeleteHoward Gardner cites a study of professional musicians which showed that as children they made very rapid progress (were almost self-taught) initially, then went through a phase where they needed to rehearse skills a lot, which generally required someone to keep them on task and correct technique, then they emerged into an 'expert' phase where they could use their skills for creative tasks such as composition or performance.
I strongly suspect that autonomously educated children go through the same three phases. They can master many basic skills in lots of domains without much encouragement or input from adults. To go on to truly proficient use of those skills, they either have to be highly intrinsically motivated, or they need someone on their case all the time to make sure they put in the hours.
Of course if the child is learning something that interests them intensely, they will put in the hours themselves, and seek out relevant information and become experts under their own steam.
If the interest isn't there, which it often isn't in settings where the educational content is determined by someone else, children will need active teaching.
'That can't be the difference. Oh wait a minute, I think I might have it! In England all but a tiny handful of children attend school between the ages of five and sixteen.'
ReplyDeleteUm, I would imagine the main difference was having a literate parent willing to assist them.
Mrs Anon
"Um, I would imagine the main difference was having a literate parent willing to assist them."
ReplyDeleteThis is what you might call a chicken and egg situation. At one time, the literacy rate in this country was as low as it is currently in some of the less economically developed nations today. As schooling has become universal; so has literacy. If it were a matter of literacy just spreading informally, perhaps by a few parents teaching it to their children, who then passed it on to friends and neighbours, one would have thought that universal literacy would have arrived hundreds of years ago. Goodman actually talks of 'catching the code' and some researchers twenty years ago talked of 'catching' reading, as something which could happen more or less without any effort on anybody's part.
This sort of spread of literacy does not seem to happen. It rather looks as though a network of compulsory school are the key to universal literacy.
Your variables look a bit, well, variable, Simon.
ReplyDeleteThe literacy rate in the UK before the introduction of compulsory education (taking your definition of being able to read a short note) was as low as some less economically developed nation currently, *because* previous generations had also been illiterate. In other words many children couldn't learn to read or write with the help of their parents. And books were expensive. In short, literacy in the UK in 1860 was broadly comparable to Dhaka today.
But it isn't comparable now. Even if all schools were closed down tomorrow, most parents would be able to teach their children to read, and most children have ready access to books. So although there's little doubt that teaching reading in schools accounts for a significant part of the literacy rate, you can't directly compare it with Dhaka, because you don't know how much is accounted for by parents, or a literate environment.
Also, it's not clear that the schools that abandoned the whole language or real books methods were using the same measure of literacy as the measure you cited - reading a simple note.
Do you know what measure they used?
"Also, it's not clear that the schools that abandoned the whole language or real books methods were using the same measure of literacy as the measure you cited - reading a simple note."
ReplyDeleteThey certainly were not! They used the same measures that are used in the SATs.
"Even if all schools were closed down tomorrow, most parents would be able to teach their children to read, and most children have ready access to books."
Worth thinking about what might happen if schools were all closed down. Rather like the collapse of the Roman Empire as it affected Britain. Remember the dark Ages? Even where the parents are literate, it would only take a generation or two for this literacy to die out without schools. If it really was that easy for literacy to be transmitted informally by seeing print and having one's parents play I spy and other simple games, then it really would spread and increase like a virus. Instead, without schools, it tends to whither away.
There were other things going on in the Dark Ages. Europe was preoccupied for centuries with defending itself against repeated invasions from Scandinavia. It was more important for children to know how to grow food and fight than read and write. Monasteries (then the repositories of literacy) were repeatedly sacked, and often had their libraries destroyed, so teaching kids to read wasn't at the top of their list of priorities.
ReplyDeleteChildren in the Dark Ages were not living in the same kind of literate environment as we are today. I suspect literacy would decline if schools closed down, but we would be unlikely to return to pre-compulsory education levels unless the Swedes, Norwegians and Danes (or anyone else) started getting ideas above their station.
"Waht an extraordinary example of autonomy! Your children actually asked as toddlers to be instructed in phonics?"
ReplyDeleteIs this how you think autonomous education works? No wonder you have doubts about it! You might just as well say, 'your children actually asked as toddlers to be sung to/read to/played with?'. Children don't have to ask for something for us to try it with them. Otherwise, how will they know something exists?
Of course a child of 2 would not say, 'Mummy, will you please teach me to read using phonics?' But a parent might point to the letter 'a' and say that letter sounds like this... If the child is interested they might point to another letter and tell them what that letter sounds like too, or the child may ask themselves. If they show absolutely no interest, that would be the end of it. Days, weeks or months later the parent may do the same again. If the child is interested and continues asking about letters they are effectively asking to be taught to read using phonics.
A parent-led educator might continue pointing out letters even if the child does not seem particularly interested and maybe just wants the parent to continue reading the story; an autonomous educator will be guided by the child's cues. I suspect that most parents are autonomous educators with 2 year olds.
"If the child is interested they might point to another letter and tell them what that letter sounds like too, or the child may ask themselves. If they show absolutely no interest, that would be the end of it. Days, weeks or months later the parent may do the same again. If the child is interested and continues asking about letters they are effectively asking to be taught to read using phonics."
ReplyDeleteThis is of course what many parents do to teach their children to read. The use of the principle that if the child fails to object, then he is actually requesting the activity is curious. Silence means consent, I suppose. I suppose that when autonomous education becomes such a broad net then many parents would be included within it, including me!
"This is of course what many parents do to teach their children to read. The use of the principle that if the child fails to object, then he is actually requesting the activity is curious."
ReplyDeleteNot really. If a child shows interest and enjoyment in an activity, becomes involved in it, asking questions and initiates the same activity again during future reading sessions the activity is obviously not coercive. It's when a parent says, 'right, it's time for English now' and the child replies that they would rather go to the park that the possibility of coercion enters the equation. This is when you will often see the difference between autonomous and parent directed educators.
"I suppose that when autonomous education becomes such a broad net then many parents would be included within it, including me!"
Exactly the point I made at the end of my previous comment. Most parents will have educated autonomously to some extent (especially with very young children). You could only avoid it if you refused to answer any of your child's questions, follow up on any of their interests or refused to continue teaching something if it became obvious that child were enjoying themselves. I've said before that your early descriptions of Simone's education sound very much like an autonomous education. Autonomous educators see how well this works for their children and see no reason to change. Maybe other families change because they do not see this or it doesn't work so well for that particular child or family.
I had very bad luck with my comments on this posting last night. I wrote a long comment describing how my younger children had learnt to read at ages 8 and a half and nearly 8 without any teaching from me beyond the occasional game of the "what do you get if you put duh-oh-guh (dog) together?" but it didn't get saved and then I went off after my second, brief attempt not realising it was still in "preview". So here's attempt no. 3 with just a couple of links to a website and a blog article (the comments under the psychology today blog article are worth reading too). Maybe it will clear up some of your misunderstandings, Simon. BTW, I agree that you are not looking properly at Alan Thomas' conclusions. He doesn't just mention street signs and advertisements, as you put it, but that list of his you quoted also has shopping lists and instructions and if you read his book, you'll see that he refers to households where there is a plethora of books and where the parents read a lot themselves.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201002/children-teach-themselves-read
http://sandradodd.com/reading
Hi Skatty, I'm not sure what happened but I read your message about your children yesterday. Maybe it was deleted by mistake when Simon deleted Mr Williams' posts? Thank you for the link, I've repeated it under the 'Moderation' blog article along with another interesting article from the same site about maths.
ReplyDeleteSorry, make that Scatty!
ReplyDelete" you'll see that he refers to households where there is a plethora of books and where the parents read a lot themselves."
ReplyDeleteI've just re-read the chapter on reading in How Children Learn at Home and I can't see anything about this. On page 107 Thomas mentions that the parents usually provide books , magazines and comics, but that seems to be all. Where is the stuff about a plethora of books and the parents reading a lot themselves?
In this article, informal learning, home education and homeschooling, Thomas writes:
ReplyDeleteBy the time they reach school age, most children will be well on the way to learning to read, having established familiarity with letter shapes, their own names, other words that surround them in their everyday lives and from books read to them. They will have at least a basic grasp of essential maths concepts e.g.. counting, adding and subtracting, though obviously not the computational skills they will acquire later on. All the time, too, they will be expanding their general knowledge by listening, watching, asking interminable questions, playing games, getting involved in household activities, shopping, going on visits and so on. It's such an ordinary part of everyday life at home that parents are rarely aware of the prodigious amount of learning that is going on.
He also says,
It is true that informal, sometimes referred to as child-centred education, was supposedly practiced in the so-called permissive 1960s and 1970s, though it had little in common with the kind of informal learning described here (Entwistle, 1970; McKenzie, & Kernig, 1975). Classroom research, in the early 1980s, demonstrated that even this limited kind of informal learning had not really gone beyond the rhetorical (Bennett et al, 1984; Galton, Simon & Kroll, 1980). The only informal learning that does occur in the classroom concerns how to act as a school student, fulfilling institutional and peer-approved roles, what has been called the hidden curriculum.
Goodman appears to be talking of introducing informal learning methods into schools in much the way suggested above. His book, COMPULSORY MISEDUCATION appears to be available online so I will have a read.
Simon wrote,
ReplyDelete"It is more or less an article of faith among many home educators that the teaching of reading is unnecessary; children can be expected to pick this skill up for themselves in the right circumstances."
I think Alan Thomas' book, Educating Children at Home is possibly better though, to be fair, I haven't read How Children Learn at Home so this is just my impression gained from your comments. The Google Books link above allows some of the book to be read online. In it he says:
Although children who learn informally have a large measure of control over what they learn, they are not going to learn much if left to their own devices, any more than they would have in early childhood. The parent is as indispensable for informal as for more formally organized teaching and learning. The child has to acquire knowledge about the culture from the parent who has to play an active role in transmitting or mediating it. How do 'informal' parents do this? Partly by cottoning on to what the child is interested in and extending it, and partly by suggesting things the child might be interested in and seeing if they are taken up.
On learning to read he says:
As we shall see, few rely on a single reading scheme or a specific approach. They find that responding to children as individual learners is far more important...
The children in the study generally learned to read without serious difficulty. .. Although they made use of schemes and methods commonly used in school, how they used them was determined by what worked with the individual child. There were often marked differences between children in the same family. What worked with one child did not with a sibling. The process for each child could also be dynamic and change over time. Such and individualised approach would simply be impractical in the classroom, but not at home...
Another interesting feature is that it is the children, rather than the parents, who often dictate the propitious moment to advance reading, in the context of something that has attracted their attention.
In my experience of about 10 autonomously educated young people, late readers are more likely to request a more structured approach to learning to read than early readers.
"On page 107 Thomas mentions that the parents usually provide books , magazines and comics, but that seems to be all."
ReplyDeleteThere, you've pretty much answered your own question - what's the difference between the children here and those growing up in the streets of Dhaka, who have no (or very little) motivation or need to learn to read and children whose parents provide them with books, magazines and comics - not to mention video and computer games and duelling cards (and, I'm presuming, read themselves, for practical reasons e.g. in following instructions for appliances, arguing with people like you on the internet ;-) and, frequently, for enjoyment)?
Alan Thomas and Harriet Pattison are actually conducting an in-depth study on children learning to read and are looking for home educators of all stripes to contribute.
ReplyDeletehttp://howchildrenlearnathome.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=37&Itemid=50
"There, you've pretty much answered your own question - what's the difference between the children here and those growing up in the streets of Dhaka, who have no (or very little) motivation or need to learn to read and children whose parents provide them with books, magazines and comics "
ReplyDeleteVery Eurocentric view of life in Bangladesh! Most people live in the same sort of buildings as we do and I belive that books and magazines are even published there. I don't think that shopping lists are unheard of either, or for that matter televisions and computers. It is a pretty modern city and yet the literacy is shockingly low.
"I don't think that shopping lists are unheard of either,"
ReplyDeleteSo illiterate parents write shopping lists? An interesting concept. Of course life if very different in Bangladesh, if only by virtue of the low literacy levels amongst parents that you report yourself. Alan Thomas has never claimed that all children will learn to read without some form of teaching, just that they can learn informally rather than through structured teaching programs and that this can happen autonomously. He says:
Although children who learn informally have a large measure of control over what they learn, they are not going to learn much if left to their own devices, any more than they would have in early childhood. The parent is as indispensable for informal as for more formally organized teaching and learning. The child has to acquire knowledge about the culture from the parent who has to play an active role in transmitting or mediating it. How do 'informal' parents do this? Partly by cottoning on to what the child is interested in and extending it, and partly by suggesting things the child might be interested in and seeing if they are taken up.
Another interesting feature is that it is the children, rather than the parents, who often dictate the propitious moment to advance reading, in the context of something that has attracted their attention.
Are you saying that all children need to be taught to read, that it's not possible to learn to read without formal instruction? If that is the case, then what do you make of the descriptions on Peter Gray's article or on other unschooling webpages, as well as experiences such as those of my children?
ReplyDelete"Very Eurocentric view of life in Bangladesh!" Are you talking about yourself here? There are people living in Dhaka in a situation equivalent to European standards, but there is strong inequality there, with 28% of Dhaka's population living below the poverty line (compared with over 50% in rural Bangladesh)and 19:4% of them living in slums. The poverty rate was even higher in previous decades, with more people than now growing up in severe poverty and no access to books. These conditions are not conducive to becoming literate - put these kids in school instead of scouring the streets to help feed themselves and their families and make sure that they have at least one decent meal a day so that they can focus on something else besides their hunger and you will improve the literacy rates. I agree with you there. However, one has to look at the literacy rate of children whose parents are literate. I don't think that the Paul Goodman quote can be taken at face value, either (or it should be taken with a pinch of salt).
This is what life is like for a significantproportion of children in Dhaka:
http://asadbinyousuf.wordpress.com/
These children are also not living in families where they have books lying around the house and the parents spend some of their leisure time reading for enjoyment or so that they can write a letter to the Times to complain about the Badman report, the type of environment that is common to most unschoolers who learnt to read without having to be taught by someone else.
I think it's really sad that any children who have 11 years of schooling are only reading at the level of a 7 year old. I don't know any older unschoolers (and I know quite a few) who read at such a basic level - even those who started reading later, up to the age of 11. The majority of these (like my younger 3 children) had no formal reading instruction.
By the way, here are some figures for Johannesburg, where I grew up:
Schooling in Greater Johannesburg shows approximately 19,2% of the population being illiterate. The literacy rate (the percentage of persons 13 years and older with at least a standard 5 qualification) of Gauteng in 1991 was 69%, and the non-school attendance rate in the province was 8,7%.
Oh well, one interesting side effect of this discussion is that I've learnt a lot about Dhaka. I have to be honest and say that I didn't even know what the capital of Bangladesh was before this!
ReplyDeleteThere's an interesting discussion on a forum for cricket fans, where one of them says:
Dhaka is already the most densely populated metropolis in the world. And poor village people are pouring in the city at a much higher rate than I have ever seen. I cannot walk one mile without encountering at least 5 crippled kids lying on the footpath (they are a ghastly sight), or 10 poor kids who surround me and want my empty bottle of cola. Kids defecate in the drains by the main avenues, and I cannot even have a cup of tea in a tea stall without encountering a poor, homeless mother with an infant in her hands asking for alms. At night I see prostitutes standing in the corners of streets of my neighborhood and being picked up by rickshawalas.
Sounds like either a recipe for disaster, if I just think of Haiti.
Here's an interesting comparison between Dhaka and Seoul. (Sorry to bombard you with all these comments, but you've really piqued my interest):
ReplyDeletehttp://www.prb.org/Articles/2001/UrbanizationTakesonNewDimensionsinAsiasPopulationGiants.aspx
By the way, this article puts the ADULT literacy rate in Dhaka at 60% and 9% of households have telephone access.
Some interesting quotes:
Dhaka's growth has not been associated with an expansion of productive employment opportunities in relatively high wage areas. Instead, there has been growing employment in the low productivity, low-income sector, such as petty retailing or rickshaw driving. This has meant that the number of people defined as poor in the city grew by almost 2 million between 1980 and 2001. While in recent years the introduction of textile export industries and remittances from international labor have begun to diversify the economic base of the city, it still remains desperately poor (see table).
and
Only one-quarter of the city's population is connected to the piped sewerage system, and only two-thirds of the households are connected to water. A majority of the unconnected households use open latrines.
"This has meant that the number of people defined as poor in the city grew by almost 2 million between 1980 and 2001."
ReplyDeleteThe difficulty here Scatty is that poverty and lack of sanitation are not really connected with the literacy rate. A century ago, living conditions in many parts of this country were dreadful. In places, the poverty and deprivation were as terrible as the conditions in many modern-day lesser economically developed nations. The literacy rate was however almost 100%. The reason was that schooling was compulsory nad during the 1880s, prosecutions for non-attendance had been running at over 100,000 a year. This ensured that everybody sent their children to school and was the cause of the high literacy rates. Tell mee, do you think that if all the children in Bangladesh went to school it would raise the literacy rate?
"So illiterate parents write shopping lists?"
ReplyDeleteComes down again to the definition of literacy. I had an illiterate uncle and aunt back in the fifties. The uncle was a Gypsy and the aunt had learning difficulties. They certainly did make shopping lists, although not of course in standard English. For example, they might laboriously copy the logo from a tin or packet, or draw a picture of some item to remind them. Nothing elaborate; a rectangle for conrflakes, that sort of thing. Their children certainly observed this activity, but I doubt it would have led them on the path to literacy unless they had been forced to go to school.
"Are you saying that all children need to be taught to read, that it's not possible to learn to read without formal instruction? "
ReplyDeleteNo, I'm not saying this at all. It has certainly been observed. However, until we know how common this is and how well it compares with systematic instruction in a classroom for transmitting literacy to young children, I think that we should be cautious about adopting this method. We know that the present system produces around 99% literacy rate. We have no idea whether relying upon children picking up the idea by themselves with a little help from their parents would work anything like as well.
Simon wrote,
ReplyDelete"The literacy rate was however almost 100%. The reason was that schooling was compulsory nad during the 1880s, prosecutions for non-attendance had been running at over 100,000 a year."
If the literacy rate 100 years ago was 100% and compulsory schooling began in the 1880s, who taught the parents of those who had been to school to read? About 30% of the population was aged over 40 in 1911 and will have missed out on compulsory education, yet you claim they were literate.
Simon wrote,
ReplyDelete"I think that we should be cautious about adopting this method. We know that the present system produces around 99% literacy rate. We have no idea whether relying upon children picking up the idea by themselves with a little help from their parents would work anything like as well."
But if a parent can see it working in front of their eyes, why would this be an issue for them? If only 1% can pick up reading with just the normal level of support a parent gives (reading to them, pointing out letters, playing games, providing lots of reading material, etc), but your child is part of that 1% there is not a problem.
Unless you are suggesting that parents would let a child reach 16 without having picked it up and make no attempt to encourage them to learn? Or that a child would choose to stay illiterate despite it's value being obvious in today's world? Do you really think that a teenager would actively choose not to learn to read?
One of mine learnt without obvious teaching, the other two autonomously asked for help when they were older (aged about 8 and 10). With one I just listened to them read and corrected them as necessary because they had picked up more than they realised and we followed a structured phonics program with the other after trying out a couple of other approaches that did not agree with them.
"However, until we know how common this is and how well it compares with systematic instruction in a classroom for transmitting literacy to young children, I think that we should be cautious about adopting this method."
ReplyDeleteI agree. I don't think that home educators are insisting that the schools should take on their methods wholesale, but just wanting the freedom to do this themselves. The home educators I know who let their children learn to read without lessons usually have the experience of their own or other other older children and, as someone said above, watch their children for signs of readiness.
Just wondering, have you looked at Peter Gray's article that refers to the Sudbury school his children went to? His article (which in itself is based on cases of 18 families) mentions a study of 16 children at that school as well as his son's (a teacher there) descriptions of the way children at that school learn to read. As well as this, there are 154 comments, out of which we can assume that half (say, about 80) talk about personal expeiences of this kind of learning (at an average of 2 children per family, that would be the experiences of 160 children). I haven't gone through all the comments to see if my estimates are right, but that would be an interesting exercise. One of the commenters refers to a further two studies, one of which was a pilot study that studied 19 home educated children who learnt to read with little or no tuition and 11 children who learnt to read late. Thus we have (even with a certain amount of overlap) at least 200 children who didn't get the kind of intensive reading tuition that the schools provide and still became good readers, not just at the age 7 level. This certainly points to the fact that this approach is one that should be studied more to see what it was that worked for these people and if it can be applied in schools (particularly the data coming from the Sudbury schools or the likes of Summerhill) and not to be rubbished in a kind of knee-jerk reaction.
I certainly think that classrooms could start by having comics and interesting stuff that kids would like to read instead of the boring dumbed-down readers that children are restricted to. As well as that, children are all expected to learn to read at the same age and those who are not developmentally ready are often labelled "slow". Not every baby starts walking at 12 months of age or starts talking at 18 months. The same goes for reading, but the school system lets down those who are not developmentally ready at the "normal" time.
Here are the links to the two studies I mentioned above:
http://www.otago.ac.nz/news/news/otago006408.html
https://great-ideas.org/Encounter224/Keys-Crain224.htm
Thanks for the links scatty. I've always doubted that informal education could transfer to the classroom, purely because of the pupil:teacher ratio. The time an adult is available to a child for informal learning seems crucial, at least for younger children. I'll have to read up on the Sudbury Schools.
ReplyDeleteFrom past reading I suspect Summerhill is autonomous in that the children can choose to attend classes or not, but not really informal. My impression is that their lessons would look much the same as lessons in any other school in the UK, though I must stress it's a while since I read about Summerhill so this impression may have been distorted by time!
After a quick look at the Sudbury Valley School site and adults and children of all ages mix freely, which may explain how informal education can happen with a relatively low adult:child ratio. Their FAQ includes the following:
ReplyDeleteDaria: Do you have teachers in your school?
Mimsy: We have adults. They're called "staff members" and they do sometimes teach, as do many of the kids, but their main purpose is to be here as resources, as people who help make sure the school is running properly, and as role models for what it's like to be a grownup. Hopefully we're okay at being grownups.